


Calling All Dawns

by AndyAO3



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect
Genre: At this point it's shippy if you squint, Crossover, Pure Crack, The rating is a tentative T, and now the shipping has begun, could be gen also, this is an experiment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-01 18:03:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4029487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Normandy crash-lands on Thedas. Kaidan makes a friend. Don't question it, because Steve certainly isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. rassemblons-nous

**Author's Note:**

> PURE CRACK I DON'T EVEN I JUST WANTED TO WRITE DORIAN DISCOVERING THE NORMANDY AND SHIT ESCALATED FROM THERE
> 
> idek it's silly alright? idgaf. this uses my mage femAdaar and my infiltrator earthborn ruthless femShep, both of whom are gay for their respective adorable information-trading bisexual girlfriends, but you don't see either of them actually IN this (yet). if I write more then I write more, if I don't then I don't, I just wanted to get the concept down. Did not have a beta.

This was possibly the dumbest thing Kaidan had ever gotten himself into.

In the back of his mind he knew that the war wasn't over. Time and again he reminded himself that the Reapers were still out there, that the  _Normandy_ was probably running out of supplies for the dextro crew members, and that even after the war was won -  _if_ it was won - he wasn't about to spend his time on a planet that was still stuck in what amounted to the Crusades technologically. Earth would need to be rebuilt, the galaxy would still be a mess, and the Council would still need every Spectre they could get. 

"So this sky-ship of yours..." Dorian began conversationally, sounding like he was desperately trying to not sound curious. "Does it sail on the wind somehow, taking its lift from the air in much the same way a bird might? Or do your people use your, erm... 'Biotics' to lift it off of the ground as one might be able to manage with a combination of force magic and an immeasurably large flock of birds?"

Kaidan chuckled, shaking his head as they rode a pair of Inquisition-provided horses up the trail that would take them to where the  _Normandy_ had landed. Dorian's was a large, well-bred black stallion, while Kaidan's was a calm chestnut mare. 

"Or perhaps a dragon, if we're to delve into the realm of the fantastic," Dorian continued. "A flight of griffons? Wait, of course! I know how it flies, it's flung into the sky by a domesticated mountain giant, and from there it merely spreads its mighty sails like a massive eagle and simply glides to the stars."

"Hate to disappoint, but no."

"Pity, that. I was hoping I might be able to take some small comfort in the knowledge that I'd gone mad." Sighing melodramatically, Dorian slumped in his saddle and resumed looking bored. He'd started out in a good mood when they'd left Skyhold, but it seemed like the long ride back to the ship was wearing thin. "How much further is it? And  _please_ tell me it will provide at least some shelter from this abysmal weather."

"This really isn't that bad, Dorian." Not compared to winter back home anyway. Yeah, Kaidan was wearing his insulated hardsuit, but Dorian was wearing, uh. Dragon webbing? Whatever it was, Kaidan had gotten a look at it and he was pretty sure it'd make for some warm clothes judging by the look and feel of it. He was still skeptical about it having come from an actual dragon though.

"Coming from the madman who uses magic and manages to dream without ever having so much as touched the Fade? Hah!" Dorian was only quiet for a second before he spoke again. "That wasn't sarcasm, by the way. How much farther will we have to ride before we reach your impossible flying ship? I don't much care for long stretches spent bobbing about on horseback."

Always with the complaints. No wonder it didn't seem like Dorian had many friends back at Skyhold. Kaidan suspected it was on purpose. "Not too far now. Pretty sure it's just over that rise." He stopped his horse for a moment and pointed ahead to a snow-covered hill where he could just barely make out the shore party's bootprints.

Dorian slowed his horse down so as to not overtake Kaidan, squinting at where the biotic was pointing. "You're certain?"

"Yep." Kaidan started to lift his left arm. "Could check with my omni-tool if you'd prefer."

The mage shuddered. "Oh, no. No, that's quite unnecessary, thank you. Your judgment on the matter will be most sufficient."

Kaidan grinned as Dorian clicked his tongue and gave the reins a jerk to signal his horse into a trot, following suit a moment later.

Was he a little mean for finding it funny that Dorian was unnerved by "magic" that he hadn't wrapped his head around yet? Probably. Still, at least Dorian had opted to come back with him. That was progress.

Not too bad as far as potential scenarios for first contact went, right?

"Maker's breath," Kaidan heard Dorian mumble after they'd crested that last hill. " _That's_ your ship?"

The mage was staring openly, his mouth hanging open as he gawked at the gleaming vessel. In spite of her rough landing, the  _Normandy_ looked to be in fine shape, though Dorian probably wouldn't be able to tell at a glance. Kaidan honestly felt a bit proud at how flabbergasted the mage was. "Yep. That's her."

"And you've mentioned that this is, in fact, a small ship by your standards?"

"The  _Normandy_ 's a frigate. Small, fast, nimble. Her stealth systems hide her emissions from most sensors, so she's pretty sneaky too." Kaidan was tempted to list technical specs, but he was fairly sure Dorian got the gist. 

" _Fasta vass._ I've seen Qunari dreadnoughts scarcely half that size." Dorian's horse pawed at the snow and snorted as he absently ended up tugging too hard on the bit; he glanced down, seemed to catch himself, and let his hands fall so that the horse had a little more wiggle room. 

Kaidan didn't bother to keep himself from grinning. With a reaction like that to the  _Normandy_ , he wondered what Dorian would think of the  _Destiny Ascension_ . "I take it you approve."

"Well I'd say I must be dreaming all of this, but even the cleverest demons usually aren't this creative with the things they conjure up to tempt me," the mage said, sitting up straighter in his saddle. He turned his head to blink at Kaidan, totally in awe. "It's a great metal coffin with fins-- how in Andraste's name does it even fly? Surely its weight would mean that the energy expenditure for such magic would be unthinkable."

"You weren't far off when you guessed it was biotics, honestly. Same principle, just with tech."

Dorian nodded to himself, turning his attention slowly back to the ship. It was pretty obvious that the mage was going over everything in his head, trying to reconcile what Kaidan was telling him with what he knew. To his credit, Dorian was probably the one person Kaidan had met at Skyhold who would actually be able to grasp the concepts Kaidan was talking about. Hell, aside from the Inquisitor herself, Dorian had been the one person there who was at all competent with magic, let alone the physics that were probably behind it.

Reason number two for bringing Dorian back with him, really; Kaidan had questions, he needed the  _Normandy_ 's scanners and medical equipment to answer them, and Dorian had given his consent so long as none of the tests involved leeches. "Wanna see the inside?" the biotic asked.

"Oh, absolutely," Dorian responded immediately. Then he grinned like a kid in a candy store, and Kaidan knew he'd found a fellow nerd.

\---

The shuttle bay was open when they rode up, with Cortez working on the Kodiak while wrapped up in a thick coat. Kaidan would've suggested an exosuit, but he could relate to not being used to wearing one. "Lieutenant," Kaidan greeted with a nod.

Cortez looked up and straightened to parade rest to offer a salute, smirking. "Major Alenko, didn't expect you back so soon." Then the salute was dropped and the welding torch was shut off as he caught sight of Dorian, eyebrows raising.

"Didn't feel like joining Shepard and Vega in their dragon hunt with the locals, so I figured I'd swing back and see how things were going on your end," Kaidan said. Meanwhile, Dorian was gawking at what little of the ship's interior that he could see and muttering the occasional astounded untranslatable word.

"Right, makes sense." Cortez was still eyeing Dorian. "You, uh. I see you brought a friend."

Dorian kept staring until Kaidan navigated his horse over close enough to be able to elbow the mage in the side. "Ow! What-- oh!" Once the mage seemed to catch on that introductions were a thing, it became Kaidan's job to catch the reins for Dorian's stallion as the other man hopped off of his horse in order to give Cortez a sweeping bow. "How rude of me! Dorian of house Pavus, formerly of Minrathous."

The shuttle pilot was having trouble not grinning at the display, reaching out for a handshake which Dorian thankfully seemed to understand the concept of as he reciprocated in kind. "Lieutenant Steve Cortez, Alliance navy," Cortez replied. "A pleasure to meet you, Dorian."

"The pleasure is undoubtedly mine, ser Cortez," Dorian said with a smirk, before promptly running off to go poke at Shepard's wandering FENRIS mech pretty much the instant he spotted it.

Cortez blinked after the oddly dressed mage. "So, uh." He shot an aside glance at Kaidan. "The locals are human."

Pretty much the same kind of reaction the shore party had to the idea. "Yep. Well, some. Others are elves. Dwarves. There's another race apparently called the Qunari that are pretty much really tall humans with massive horns on their heads." Kaidan shrugged.

"Great." Cortez threw up his hands. "So we've crash-landed on Middle Earth."

"Kinda seems like it, huh?"

"You said Shepard went  _dragon hunting_ ?"

"She uh, called it a 'team-building exercise'. Brought Vega along too. Thought of it the minute the locals mentioned that dragons were a thing."

"Uh-huh." Cortez went back to staring after Dorian, watching the excited mage babble about having never seen such a sophisticated autonomous construct. "I bet Liara's gonna love hearing that."

"Are you kidding? Liara's going to have to be dragged away bodily from sticking around to check out every ancient ruin that's remotely in range."

"What, are they Prothean?"

"No, they're completely unrelated to the Protheans. In fact I'd even say that some of it looks more like ancient Earth ruins than anything."

"God, yeah. Better not tell her then." Then Cortez pulled out his welding torch once more, turning to head back to finishing his work on the shuttle. "Your new friend's coming back," he said.

And sure enough, Dorian returned seconds later. "Why in the world are you still mounted? Do you intend to confound me with the wonders of your impossible sky-ship while on horseback? Come on!"

Kaidan shared a glance with Cortez, who just smiled and shrugged as if to say it was Kaidan's problem, not his. Right. "Gimme a sec, alright? Someone's gotta hitch up the horses and make sure they're fed."

"Oh, don't bother. They know their way back." Dorian dismissed the thought with a wave.

"But then how do we get you back to Skyhold later?"

Cortez held up a hand. "Could take the shuttle," he suggested.

The thought made Kaidan frown. "We've already contaminated their culture enough as it is by landing here and bringing guns--"

"If you're worried about cultural contamination then why bring Mister Pavus back with you?" Cortez asked pointedly.

"That's different," Kaidan said. "He's a scholar."

"With respect, sir? That makes it worse."

Dorian huffed. "A scholar that no one will listen to," he grumbled.

Maybe he didn't understand the whole conversation, but Kaidan was thankful for Dorian at least being able to follow along. Besides, the mage had a point. "Look, one person coming here before going back? No one will take that seriously. But parking a shuttle inside the walls of a major settlement just for the sake of saving some time? That'll call everything they think they know into question."

Cortez made a gesture of surrender. "All right, fine. Not gonna argue this one. Horses it is."

Kaidan nodded firmly, setting off to do as he'd originally intended. He quietly hoped that Shepard and Vega would be half as considerate when they eventually came back.

"Cultural contamination?" he heard Dorian muse behind him. "More likely you would be caught and burned at the stake, as far south as we are."

\---

Dorian was fascinated by the elevator. More than once, Kaidan had to swat his hands away from the controls on the way up to the CIC. Kaidan figured that he'd take Dorian on a tour deck-by-deck, show him around. Make sure he didn't break anything or hurt himself.

That last bit was probably going to be the biggest challenge, seeing as Dorian burst forth from the elevator and made a beeline for the galaxy map before Kaidan could catch him, only barely catching himself on the safety rail.

"EDI, set the galaxy map up for display only," Kaidan said as he saw Dorian reaching for the haptic interface.

"Of course, Major Alenko," the AI responded over the intercom. The sound made Dorian jerk upright and whip around to try and figure out where the voice was coming from.

" _Kaffas_ , what in Andraste's name is that? A spirit? Show yourself!"

Great, the mage was freaked out. Good recipe for getting the ship set on fire. "Dorian, calm down. It's just EDI."

Dorian's gaze landed on Kaidan, full of uncertainty and wariness. "You'll forgive me if I'm not so eager to trust disembodied voices."

"Have I offended?" EDI asked. "If you prefer, I can relocate myself to the CIC so that my voice is no longer disembodied."

Since Kaidan would rather not have his ship turned into a gnarled lump of charred metal (again), he met Dorian's slightly panicked look and nodded. Dorian returned the nod with one of his own, relaxing a little in the process. Then he looked up at the ceiling like that was where he figured the voice was coming from. "If you would be so kind, then I would certainly appreciate it," he said.

Kaidan felt kinda bad for him. "Sorry. Should've warned you about that."

"Warned me of your possessed ship? Perish the thought. Who would think to warn someone that they have a pet spirit?" Sarcasm dripped from the mage's voice, and the muscles in his jaw were still tight. "Next you'll be telling me you have a darkspawn aboard, I suppose."

With perfect timing, Garrus stepped out from the doorway that led to the war room before Kaidan could say anything. "Kaidan, good to see you're back in one piece. I guess the locals didn't shoot you afterall." the Turian drawled, while Dorian looked as if he might faint at the sight. "Who's your friend?"

" _Festis bei umo canavarum,_ " Dorian mumbled, leaning heavily against the galaxy map guardrail. 

Well, at least the immediate reaction hadn't been to try and set Garrus on fire.


	2. seirenes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorian, what are you even doing?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nothing really happens here. THREE THOUSAND WORDS OF FLUFF. And also here is where we see the first hints of shippy, I'd say. Beta by potionsmaster because she's fantastic like that. 
> 
> Writers, don't EVER take up Dorian as a muse. He does not fucking shut up. He has opinions about literally everything. He is the worst muse. Don't get him started or you'll be at it till six in the morning going "are you done yet???"

Dorian had been fascinated by Ser Kaidan Alenko from the moment he'd first seen the man, all that unusually bright blue armor gleaming in the sun. He had watched from his window as one of Cullen's templars had tried their hand at silencing the stranger's unusual (which a southern templar would be quick to interpret as demonic) magic, only to earn a rather perplexed look and the privilege of being knocked on their plated arse.

The curious display struck the mage for two reasons: the first being that Cullen's templars that had accompanied him from Kirkwall probably had enough experience - and lyrium - to silence even a magister such as Dorian's father if pressed, and the second being that Dorian couldn't feel even the faintest scrap of magic or so much as the slightest whiff of a spirit's power lingering in the wake of the newcomer's spell.

Naturally, this led to Dorian setting off down the steps, through the dusty chamber once inhabited by Solas and out into the courtyard to confront this peculiar mage. Perhaps he'd tell the templars off, using his position as the beastly Inquisitor's dreaded pet magister to his advantage for once. Maybe he could use that perceived heroism to charm a bit of information out of this newcomer, so that he might sate his curiosity.

Well. If there was anything Dorian was good at, it was failing to follow through on the elaborate scenarios he concocted in his head. After all, he'd hardly _planned_ to follow Kaidan back to his absurd sky-ship and get acquainted with the man's crew.

"The QEC is up and running again, as is the strategic interface in the war room," a small woman said, glancing down at what appeared to be a glowing metal-and-glass pad of parchment for all intents and purposes. She had dark hair bobbed in a most practical fashion, dainty features, and frankly reminded him of a less dangerous version of Josephine. Her name was Samantha. "The holographic display in the conference room is still a bit janky, however, so you might want to keep all your calls audio-only until we've fixed it."

Kaidan smirked at her. "That the technical term, Specialist?" he asked; Dorian got the impression that in spite of the man's obvious professionalism, this crew was more similar to the Bull's Chargers than Cullen's forces.

His hunch was confirmed when Madame Traynor ducked her head with embarassment. "I'm not sure your new, erm... Friend?" She cast a nervous glance in Dorian's direction, and as such Dorian felt it only fitting that he offer her his most charming smile. "Er, well I'm not sure he'd appreciate my going into the technicalities, sir."

"Oh, don't hold back on my account." He'd be insulted if it weren't for the fact that these people seemed to excel at making him feel ignorant. "I'm hardly one to be intimidated by fancy words."

The woman looked to Kaidan again for guidance - Dorian assumed that he was her superior officer in whatever odd version of a command structure these foreigners had - and he nodded in confirmation for her. "Dorian's here as... A liason, I guess. He doesn't pose a security risk, don't worry."

"Well..." She eyed Dorian uncertainly for a moment longer. "If you say so. The holographic projector was overloaded by the same power surge that hit our drive core. Tali and the crew down in Engineering have been too busy with getting basic comms and the FTL systems working to come up and fix the nonessential systems, so it's gone mostly untouched. Right now it pretty much bathes the room in broken pixels whenever you try to turn it on. It's a real mess, honestly."

Dorian stared at her as his mind attempted to process what sounded to him like a jumbled mix of words and phrases and jargon that probably might have made sense on their own and out of context. The most he could get out of it was that Kaidan's whole mess had been caused by some sort of energy surge. Most of the rest meant precisely bugger-all to him when taken as a whole.

What sort of energy surge could knock a magical flying metal ship out of the sky? The will of the Maker himself, maybe?

But he didn't say any of that aloud, oh no. That would be showing his ignorance again, and redundant besides. He didn't lack for other questions. "For what reason would furthering what sounds to be a primary method of communication be considered nonessential?" he asked instead.

Both Kaidan and the so-called specialist turned their heads to stare; Madame Traynor looked surprised, but Kaidan had an odd furrow in his brow that piqued Dorian's curiosity. "Being able to see who we're talking to when we can already hear them is what's nonessential, Dorian," Kaidan explained. Then he shifted his attention back to the specialist. "I'm gonna go ahead and get cleaned up. Rather not deliver my report to Hackett until I've had a chance to check the situation in Engineering firsthand."

Madame Traynor nodded quickly as she seemed to suppress a fleeting smile. "Probably not a bad idea, considering how the pair of you smell like a stable."

Most superior officers would have at least frowned at such a statement in Dorian's experience, but Kaidan laughed instead. "Better than smelling like a gym, I guess."

"Only marginally," she replied, and Kaidan shook his head while Dorian wondered what in Andraste's name a _gym_ was. "What about your friend?"

"Yes, what about me?" Dorian added, for it was an excellent question. "Am I to be left to my own devices aboard your fantastical sky-ship?"

Kaidan eyed him. "I dunno, Dorian. Think you can handle yourself for an hour if I leave you with Specialist Traynor?"

Kaffas, he was asking whether Dorian could keep his hands to himself, wasn't he? Oh, how little the good Major knew. "I can assure you that I will be on my best behavior. I shall even do my level best to not set any of your comrades on fire, no matter how much they might resemble darkspawn or demons."

"Right..." It was plain to see that Kaidan didn't quite believe it, but Dorian didn't really expect him to. People rarely believed the evil necromancer. Yet it seemed that he was going to trust Dorian at his word all the same, turning back towards the curious box that lifted and lowered people between levels. "Keep an eye on him, Traynor," the Major instructed.

Then he was gone, leaving Dorian alone with Madame Traynor in the cavernous room they called the CIC.

It wasn't long before the silence wore thin and Dorian shifted to give her an incredulous look. "I smell like a _stable_?"

"Under the scented whatever-it-is you're wearing? Yes." The young woman smirked at him, folding her arms. "If you're alright with the idea of a communal latrine, you could have a go at the showers."

Showers? Communal ones? Maker, it almost sounded like the bath houses back home. "I can't say that I've ever heard of there being running water on a ship before," he remarked. Skyhold didn't even have such luxuries for most of its occupants. "Though I doubt there would be much of a point to bathing when I haven't a fresh set of clothes, unless you would prefer that I prance about the ship in the nude. Not that I would blame anyone for having such a preference."

A bubbling laugh escaped her, not unlike a songbird's twittering. It reminded him strangely of the Inquisitor, and he found that he much preferred it to something like Sera's mad snorting cackle. "I don't believe I'd have any interest beyond entertainment value," she answered. "I'm sure we can come up with a spare set of fatigues in something close to your size."

"Oh, so you can magically conjure up perfectly tailored clothes at a moments notice as well?"

"No, we've just got standardized methods of sizing clothes coupled with efficient mass-manufacturing."

"That's hardly less fanciful, Madame Traynor. Now I'm imagining hordes of elven slaves busying themselves with tailoring clothes to the exacting standards you enforce."

"Erm... Well, you're creative, I'll give you that. That's not too far off from how it was done a few centuries ago, either."

It was almost comforting to know that humanity didn't change much even with the distance between stars to seperate given branches of it. "Fair enough. What standard size would you say I am, then?"

If this ship had comforts to offer, then he was going to make sure he took full advantage of them. It had been a very long time since he'd had a bath that he hadn't needed to keep warm with his own magic.

\---

Samantha was a treasure.

First, she showed him how to manipulate what she called a "haptic interface". Through these interfaces, they interacted with most of the magic that kept the ship running; she called them "systems" but Dorian still had yet to find any evidence that they weren't magic, so he'd decided to continue thinking of them as such.

Next, she'd taken him down in the lift to the crew deck, where she'd led Dorian into a room called the crew quarters filled with bunks and footlockers. She'd spent at least a quarter of an hour tossing about numbers and measurements that made little sense, even bringing out what was clearly a measuring tape. He wasn't quite sure what centimeters were, but his height apparently added up to one hundred eighty-four of them.

"You're closer to James in height, but in build you're more like Steve..." She chewed on her lower lip as she went through what looked to be a clean laundry basket.

All of the clothes therein were terribly dull, although Dorian had to grudgingly admit that they were more practical than his robes. Perhaps the ship had the capacity to launder his robes as well? He'd rather not wear such a dreary dark blue - with some blotchy, abhorrent pattern in several shades of dismal grey providing an accent - as anything more than a placeholder if he could help it.

He had half a mind to tell her as much, but far be it for him to insult his host's taste in clothes when they hardly possessed the resources to craft him a set more suited to his own preferences. He only just managed to get away with it in the Inquisitor's case, and that had quite a bit to do with the fact that Lady Adaar was much too easy to manipulate. It was a wonder the woman had gotten as far as she had.

It was likely that dear Lady Montilyet had more than a little to do with that success. Come to think of it, Madame Traynor reminded Dorian of the ambassador in a number of ways. Considering how their Commander Shepard seemed just a bit thick, it made him wonder whether there might be some sort of pattern to such things.

Samantha's voice scattered his thoughts as if they were dandelion seeds on the wind. "If this were a bigger ship, we'd have more spares on hand. Some ships even have little shops on board where you can buy all your necessities if you've forgotten them."

Well. That was a ridiculous statement. "A vessel so large as to have its own pet merchant? Maker, just how massive must a ship be to justify such an extravagance?"

"Oh, it's a necessity. The _Destiny Ascension_ alone has a crew complement of about, ohhh..." Samantha straightened briefly, tapping a finger to her lips. "I want to say it's around ten thousand?"

"Ten _thousand?_ " Ten thousand individuals. Even on a busy day Dorian sincerely doubted that Skyhold had more than a few hundred people populating it. How large would a ship have to be to house thousands?

"Give or take." The woman shrugged this off as if it were nothing, stooping once again to continue sorting through the laundry basket in search of the elusive properly fitted set of clothing. "Mind you, there's a rumor about that it's only that big because some engineer buggered up the plans and made the main drive the size of a biotiball stadium."

Dorian was about to ask what a biotiball stadium was, and probably also ask just how big such a stadium would be. The term by itself reminded him of the amphitheatres back home, where massive gladiatorial battles were held for all to witness. He almost certainly would have asked about it - because it seemed that no matter how much he learned about these newcomers, he always had five more questions for every answer they so graciously provided him with - had the door not chosen to open at that precise moment.

And even with that being the case, he probably still would have asked his questions if it weren't for Ser Alenko having calmly sauntered in without any clothes on.

Oh, he supposed that wasn't _quite_ true. The man did have a towel on at the very least, tied neatly about his waist and leaving little to Dorian's imagination. A positively sinful thought in the back of the mage's mind noted that it wouldn't take much to remove that towel at all, or at least shift it, but he quickly shoved that thought aside before it could shape itself into a proper notion.

Andraste's tits, what were men even made of where Kaidan came from? Dorian had seen marble statues that weren't as finely chiseled. He had assumed that most of the man's bulk came from the armor he wore, but he could plainly see that he'd been mistaken in that assessment.

It was at that point when Dorian realized that he must have been gawking like an idiot the whole blighted time, mostly because Kaidan caught him doing it; the older man raised an eyebrow at him and smirked devilishly, although it was entirely possible that the latter bit was simply imagined on Dorian's part.

"Dorian," Kaidan acknowledged with a polite nod, moving towards one of the bunks and bending to poke around in some hidden compartment or other. Dorian wasn't paying all that much attention to what the man might be doing, as the Major having bent at such an angle afforded him an even better view of Kaidan's arse.

And a what a fantastic view it was.

He was only kept from appreciating it by Madame Traynor jabbing him in the ribs with her elbow, which earned her an undignified squawk and a glare.

"Must you?" Dorian hissed, rubbing at the injured area.

Samantha looked as if she were about to say something - her lips were pursed and she had a knowing look about her that Dorian didn't much care for - but the Major spoke up before she could. "Something going on over there that I should know about?" Kaidan asked in the firm tone of someone who was used to wielding authority.

"It's nothing, sir!" the woman chirped in reply, far too cheerful. Dorian shot her another venomous glance, which she pointedly ignored.

Kaidan's gaze fell on her for a moment. He clearly didn't believe her, but she seemed to have practice at not flinching away from him. "Right," the Major murmured eventually, diverting his attention towards pulling on the clothes he'd brought out.

At that, Dorian was positively entranced; his imagination hadn't come close to doing justice to what was underneath that sodding towel.

"If you've got nothing to add, then I think I'll stick with the original plan," Kaidan said as he was in the process of pulling his shirt on over his head and affixing all of the various bits to it. The accoutrements were similar to Samantha's, yet dissimilar enough that Dorian could guess at their purpose being something to do with rank. "Anything comes up, let me know."

"Yes, sir." Madame Traynor was nothing if not punctual in her reply. "Will that be all?"

The man halted at the question, however briefly. "Now that you mention it," Kaidan began, going back to the multitude of complex fastenings his clothes entailed, "I'd suggest taking Dorian to see Chakwas whenever you get the chance. She'll probably get a kick outta that."

Dorian registered that he was being talked about and frowned as it took him a few heartbeats to catch up to the conversation. He'd been too busy watching those hands; they were _quite_ nimble, weren't they? "And who is this 'Chakwas' person I'm to be introduced to?"

"Ship's doctor, over in the medbay. She'll wanna run some tests." Kaidan caught Dorian's eyes and gave him another smirk, one he most definitely hadn't imagined that time. "Don't worry. She won't bring out any leeches, I swear. Just the occasional micro-needle."

"Your words inspire such confidence, Ser Alenko," Dorian quipped.

Kaidan let out one of those faint huffs of laughter that he seemed to be so fond of. "I aim to please," he replied just as he was pulling on his socks, followed by his boots. To be honest, the man dressed himself more quickly than Dorian could ever hope to. He couldn't even begin to imagine how practised Kaidan had to be to manage it.

Was everyone on the ship expected to dress themselves in such a manner? Would the same be expected of Dorian, perhaps? Considering how obtuse their uniforms seemed to be, it would likely take upwards of half an hour for him to puzzle out how all the various fastenings worked.

Ah, he'd gone back to thinking like a scholar again. Excellent. For a minute he'd feared that he might never be able to get the thought of bare-arsed Kaidan out of his head-- aaaand it was back again. Wonderful! At least the desire demons of his dreams would have something new to taunt him with.

When Kaidan was quite finished putting all his clothes on, scarcely another moment passed before he was back to his feet and straightening it all out, sparing an instant to run one hand through his damp hair as he started for the door with a curt "as you were, Traynor". He gave Dorian little more than a glance and another swift nod before he was off again, a veritable whirlwind of activity given what the mage was used to.

He must have been staring after the man; soon after Kaidan's departure, Samantha saw fit to poke her charge in the side again with one finger.

Predictably, it made Dorian yelp. "Fasta vass, woman! The same spot? _Really_?"

"You're about as subtle as a Krogan." Her lips curved in a feline smile. "Still fine with the idea of communal latrines?"

Dorian had a rebuttal. It was a very nice rebuttal, quite scathing and all that. But it was supplanted by a thought. A hunch, one could say. His angry retort died before it could leave his lips, and in its place he offered her a smug grin. "That depends. Are you fine with the idea, Madame Traynor?" he asked her.

She blinked a bit, then bubbled up with another of those songbird-laughs. "Haha! Oh, you've got me there, mate."

The Altus wondered then if he'd managed to make himself a new friend.


End file.
